


Of Course

by delicate_mageflower



Series: It Means Tumult Universe [5]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Insomnia, Neurodivergent Character(s), PTSD, Referenced Charcter Death, Referenced Kanders, referenced sexual content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-07-16 17:00:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7276348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delicate_mageflower/pseuds/delicate_mageflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chapter 27 of It Means Tumult from Anders's perspective.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Course

**Author's Note:**

> CW: references to Kinloch Hold, unhealthy use of alcohol, referenced eating disorder, and enough talk of Karl that I _almost_ added Anders/Karl to the pairing tags

Anders’s hands shook as he poured another glass of wine. He wasn’t sure how many he was up to anymore, he knew he needed to stop, he didn’t know why he was even still bothering with glasses. Still, he’d managed not to spill anything yet, so he took that as a sign that he had much further to go before he needed to worry too much. Or at least it meant he could still almost bullshit himself into believing that.

He just wanted to sleep. That’s all he was asking for it, a much greater request than it ever should have been, even by his standards.

Aveline had shaken him, though, far worse than he could have expected. She’d talked about her past with him so many times since he’d known her, and he’d be lying if he ever claimed it didn’t regularly get to him, but he couldn’t explain what made it hurt so much more that time.

Trista. It was because of Trista. Ever since she’d really started letting him in, even though Maker only knew how badly he’d wanted it, he’d felt something in him slipping. Like he was losing Karl by caring for her the way he did. Like Karl wasn’t already lost.

He saw his phone light up again and he knew who it was. He couldn’t bring himself to read it, though. It wasn’t fair to her, or either of them if he was being honest with himself, but he didn’t have it in him just then. She wanted to come over, to see him, he’d gathered that much glancing at her first text, but he couldn’t. He simply couldn’t. He didn’t want her to see him this way, he didn’t care that it wouldn’t matter to her, or even what a hypocrite it made him. He would drink until he couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore and wallow by himself until he found his way out of it. He knew he would, he always did, whether he wanted to or not. He’d given himself purpose, he had too many obligations. He helped people, Kirkwall had given him that much. He helped people and he couldn’t let himself stop, so he’d take the weekend to let himself fall apart as much as he could and still face the world again by Monday, and he could see her again after that. He didn’t know how he’d explain himself, but he knew she’d understand. If there was anyone—at least anyone left living—who would, it was her.

He didn’t know how he was even still sitting. He’d never had a chance to build up much of a tolerance, another thing the Circle had stolen from him. He was exhausted, emotionally and physically, and he was certainly in a higher state of inebriation than he usually hit. He hadn’t consumed much else in at least a couple of days, although he wasn’t entirely sure about that count, either. The empty ache of his stomach, however, the terrible sounds it made, indicated that he was not doing well on that front. Still, for as little sleep as he’d been getting…

The problem, of course, was that a part of him still fought against it, still desperately did not want to succumb. Because when he had slept, he’d only dreamt of Karl.

“We’ll go to Rivain,” he’d once said from behind the door to their room, angled just right to keep them out of view from the hallway since they weren’t allowed to close them, while Anders was still on his knees. He’d sounded so calm and it didn’t even feel like it was only because Anders had just blown him against the wall until he came so hard he could barely stand. He’d believed it, believed in Anders, believed in them. Karl never once doubted that they’d get out, both of them, that they’d one day run so far from that place and have a real future together.

They were so young, so naïve. It sounded so stupid to Anders when he replayed that moment in his mind, to have such wild dreams, to aspire to something so normal.

He realised that’s what scared him so much about Trista, who was texting him again, and he hit the button to close his phone as soon as he noticed it. It was the same dream, the same hope. He had successfully escaped Kinloch, of course, but that was by the grace of sheer dumb luck and an important person’s pity. He’d lost the latter to time and distance and politics, and he wasn’t going to bet on lightning striking twice with regards to the former.

It wasn’t fair to her, not at all. He’d only just cracked the surface, only just begun to earn the affection she’d known he so craved. He didn’t think he could do it, though, even after she’d finally started to believe they could.

He needed to let himself sleep, to not let himself think about it any longer. He had to do something.

His screen lit up again and told him he had a voicemail from Trista. He hadn’t even realised she had actually called him. He debated listening to it, but he quickly decided he couldn’t bear to hear her voice. He didn’t deserve even that much.

His glass was empty. He didn’t remember so much as starting on it.

“Oh well,” he muttered to himself as he picked up the wine again, but he didn’t bother to grab his glass, prefacing the long drink he took straight from the bottle with a rough, “Fuck it.”

Once more he saw his phone, saw that Trista was trying to reach him, and once more he deliberately ignored it.

“Do you really think we can do it?” Anders asked Karl in his memory, flooded with overwhelming remnants he hadn’t thought of in longer than he wanted to admit. He recalled the way Karl had kissed his throat in that particular instance. He couldn’t remember where they’d been hiding that time, but he swore that in that moment he could still feel the way Karl had wrapped one arm around him and snaked the other in between their bodies, the way he’d gripped his cock like they both would’ve disappeared if he let go.

“You know I do,” he’d replied as he’d traced his lips up to Anders’s ear, his breath hot against his skin and his voice husky. “We can do anything as long as we do it together. Now keep quiet, darling…”

Anders shook his head and felt the room spin. He had another voicemail. He wondered if something was wrong, perhaps there was some emergency he needed to attend to. Her texts had seemed casual, but maybe it wasn’t about him after all, and he panicked for a moment about what might be going on before he found his hands and opened up his messages.

It was, however, just as he’d originally expected.

“Okay, now I’m worried…”

He took another drink.

“Are you legitimately ignoring me right now?”

His eyes burned at that one, which caught him by surprise. Of course she’d figure that out, he should have known better, even for as intoxicated as he was. He wouldn’t have anticipated the concern in her voice even as she asked that question, though, neither would he have thought it would hit him as hard as it did.

“Please get back to me. Fuck, I’m sorry…”

“No,” he whispered to her voice on the other end, grateful it wasn’t really her to hear him. “Fuck, no, I’m…”

“I love you.”

He dropped his phone when he heard that. She couldn’t possibly have meant to say it, couldn’t possibly have meant it at all.

It had been about 15 years since someone had last said those words to him, and he had assumed long since then that he would never hear them again, not like that.

There was no way. He must have misheard. He somehow willed himself to pick it up, despite the way the floor moved once he reached it, and when he replayed the message and heard it again, swallowed hard against the stinging of his eyes, against the way it stirred emotions in him he hadn’t wanted to admit he wasn’t previously completely sure he could actually still feel.

He listened to it again and again, unsure how to respond, if he even should at all, but he knew he could no longer ignore her. He could only imagine what it would do to her after that, could only imagine how he would feel in her shoes.

He went to text her, too afraid to do anything else, and his hands were clumsy as they fumbled around the keyboard. He typed and hit send without even paying attention. He wasn’t even quite certain what he said and he didn’t want to look, for he knew it was nothing reassuring.

Yet as soon as he moved to set his phone back down, he saw the words “incoming call” flash before his eyes.

“Tris?” He focused as hard as he could on keeping his words sharp, on hiding just how bad it really was.

“Anders, have you been drinking?”

Of course. Of course, of course, of course. He saw her and she saw him, and neither of them could ever truly lock the other out, it seemed.

She read him completely, even though the phone, and she still wasn’t walking away. She told him again that she was nearby, apparently she was heading his way. She knew what he was doing and she was only moving closer instead of running as fast as she could in the opposite direction.

He told her no, he tried to convince her to turn around, to leave him to his misery. He deserved this mess but she surely didn’t.

Not that she didn’t feel that exact same thing with the tables turned. He knew she did, knew that’s why she’d tried to hard to pull precisely what he found himself attempting but…

“Anders, please.”

So gentle, so soft, so full of…love, evidently. This was what he wanted, this was what he needed, but he couldn’t allow himself, couldn’t put her through whatever it even was, he couldn’t.

And then she was threatening to get Varric to help her break in. Finally, reluctantly, he agreed to let her in, and he could hear her sigh of relief. So he hung up.

He moved as quickly as he could to grab a key and to put away the wine, only to discover that it was empty, so he tossed it into the recycling bin and made his way downstairs. His stomach turned with each step, and they felt like they were shifting underneath him, as though they might decide to move aside and let him fall at any moment.

She was already at the door. Of course she was. She looked so beautiful, her eyes wide, the affection in them every bit as profound as the fear he saw. He must have sounded worse than he thought. He probably looked even worse than that.

He let her in and Pounce ran when he hit the couch. That was probably the first he’d heard from him all day, he realised, and that guilt tightened his chest further.

They talked, or at least he tried. He was slipping, so far but he still had so long to go. She was staying. Of course.

“We’ll talk about that in the morning,” she told him softly, calmly. She was being so patient, so much more than he deserved, especially after what he’d just put her through.

It took him a second to realise what she meant, before he realised what he’d just said. He mentioned the message, because of course he did. She was there, ready to listen, ready to stay by his side, and he had to bring that up in the state he was in. They weren’t going to discuss that yet, he knew better, but he couldn’t just be grateful. Of course.

She left the room to message Aveline and returned as quickly as she’d promised. She laid down beside him and held him so tight, so carefully.

His mind flashed back to Karl, the way he would comfort him through his episodes, the way he would hold him when no one was looking. He wondered about what it would have meant for them to achieve their goals, about where they’d be then, about what their lives would look like. Would they ever really have pulled it off? Even if they had, would they still be together after so much time? Could he still have that, after everything, even though it was with someone else?

So many questions he’d never have answers to, so many lives he could have lived but never would, so much he’d lost before he even knew what he’d be missing.

“I guess I’m the big spoon tonight,” Trista teased quietly, and she wasn’t letting go. Of course.

He was in his apartment, above his clinic, with a cat he loved nearby and a woman he…deeply cared for behind him, holding on as if for dear life. She’d reminded him of most of those things the first night she’d spent there, when she’d caught him in a nightmare and did everything she could to bring him back. She was special, there was no doubt about that.

It was too early, she wouldn’t be sleeping herself for some time even if she didn’t already struggle with her own insomnia, but he no longer had the energy to try to say something about it. Her presence was soothing, her hold grounding, and it was finally enough to calm him, enough for sleep to take him.

Of course it was.


End file.
